The White House released Barack Obama's long-form real-live actual 100% genuine birther-approved "Certificate of Live Birth" from the state of Hawaii this morning, robbing intelligent Americans of one of their chief sources of amusement and ostensibly establishing his citizenship once and for all.

So there it is. Look upon it with wonder. Is it what you imagined it would be?

At a morning press conference announcing the release, Obama put on his exasperated kindergarten teacher hat, telling the gathered reporters that he decided to release the document—which is legally less relied upon than the Hawaii birth certificate he'd previously released to put the issue to rest—because coverage of Donald Trump's rantings had crowded out discussion of the coming fiscal showdown:

The dominant news story wasn't about these huge monumental choices that we're going to have to face as a nation. It was about my birth certificate. And that was true of most of the news outlets represented here. We're not going to be able to [face those issues] if we just make stuff up [and] get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do.

OK shake out the sillies everyone! There, you feel better? After the statement, a chastened press corps turned to sober discussions of Obama's and Paul Ryan's competing budget plans. Just kidding! Everybody kept talking about the birth certificate.

Honestly, this seems like a political waste. Birtherism has contaminated a not-insignificant portion of the GOP base. It was bound to grow as an issue, especially on cable during the interminable summer. It's the primary wind beneath the hairwings of Donald Trump, Obama's dream opponent. The GOP's non-insane leaders are clearly made uncomfortable by the issue—afraid to seem crazy to independent voters and afraid to seem reasonable to their frothing base. Why not let it fester and metastasize, see GOP candidates dance around it at debates, watch cablers devour Jerome Corsi's forthcoming book, Where's the Birth Certificate?, and then release it in October?